1) you may not have a preference on where you want to live but firms in those cities have a preference for hiring ppl with hometown ties. 2) everyone wants to work at a medium-ish sized firm with chill hours and upper-middle-class pay. however, those jobs, practically, don't exist. low attrition + market saturation + lateral market = no jobs for you, especially coming out of those schools. 3) Maryland and the Philly schools won't get you to Ohio or Virginia, ever.

you need to:1) reassess your career goals with the current job market2) sit out this cycle and retake

This is entirely premature, because you don't have acceptances at most and COA anywhere you've been accepted. So let's focus on the parts you can actually compare based on what you've said.

You're ambivalent about where you live long-term, but it's not that simple. These schools are all regional, so any of the schools give you one connection point in getting a job in the region, but sometimes that isn't enough because the region is particularly parochial and insular. Where do you have ties that could help show a commitment to being there long-term? That's the easiest first place to look when you're looking at regional schools like this.

As to your goals, what do you imagine as a "medium-ish sized firm" before opening your own family/divorce/RE/small business stuff? What sort of compensation are you imagining? This can matter for several reasons. First, does that hypothetical job actually exist? Depending how you define it, you may be talking about an extremely tiny subset of firms in a region that will take 1-2 people per year, and in the regions you've mentioned, you're talking about multiple quality law schools feeding that region. Further, how much does your hypothetical outcome pay? You've possibly never considered the bimodal nature of post-LS salary, but it matters because you're looking at lower salaries on the order of $45k starting out even if you get that job you're imagining (this part is simplified to illustrate the point, not to say you're necessarily locked in to that salary, even though it's at least mostly true). Third, the former practice areas (family and divorce) definitely tend to be lower paid, while the latter will likely be lower paid considering the way you describe them (I am assuming you don't mean huge commercial RE deals you're handling in your one person shop).

You don't have enough information to figure out whether you're applying appropriately or if this is a good investment for you. But you're starting to think about some of the things that matter in picking a law school, which is great. Keep pushing yourself to consider your goals, how likely those goals are, how much those goals will cost for you, and whether you'll be able to service that cost should you achieve your goal. You have a long way to go, but you can get there if you just keep researching and keep focusing on what matters most in picking a law school: goals, cost, and likelihood of achieving that goal.

It would help if you gave your numbers as well so people have a people sense of where you stand before giving their advice. An important thing to recognize is that all of those schools you are looking at are considered regional schools. For the most part, your employment prospects will be limited to the region of whichever school you chose, and should you decide you want to go big law eventually you're gonna have a hell of a time. And by that I mean forget about it unless your top 10%, and even that will be no guarantee.

SomewhatLearnedHand wrote:It would help if you gave your numbers as well so people have a people sense of where you stand before giving their advice. An important thing to recognize is that all of those schools you are looking at are considered regional schools. For the most part, your employment prospects will be limited to the region of whichever school you chose, and should you decide you want to go big law eventually you're gonna have a hell of a time. And by that I mean forget about it unless your top 10%, and even that will be no guarantee.

This is mostly true, but the OP didn't say anything about biglaw, so it's not really responsive.

OP, you can get local small-to-mid firm jobs out of the schools you list, and you can go from a local firm like that to running your own practice in family/small business stuff. It will require a fair amount of networking and making connections, likely more than worrying about grades, so you will have to think about how good you are at making those kinds of professional connections. If you're looking to be able to just go to class, look at job postings, fill out an app, and get a job, it will likely be more complicated than that, but getting those jobs can be done, especially depending on your experience/temperament. It's true that it won't be guaranteed out of the schools that you list (if you haven't checked out Law School Transparency's employment statistics, you should probably do that).

But a big priority should be minimizing debt, since those kinds of jobs don't tend to pay very well, and not having debt gives you the greatest flexibility.

Also, keep in mind what everyone has said, that local schools feed locally. I think you can create ties to a new community by going to law school there (again, it will require effort: networking through joining the local bar association, a local inn of court if you can swing it, taking part in stuff), but the school's best leverage is going to be in the local market, so you should be prepared to commit to the local market for some years after law school to maximize your job opportunities.